In 1993, one of the world’s largest exchange holding companies, CBOE, introduced the Volatility Index, which is now a key measure of near-term volatility in the market. Yesterday, it posted its largest-ever one-day rise as markets posted massive losses amidst spiking trading volumes.
Apart from the pain these events are causing for traders, investors, and those who dare to check their 401(K) balances, financial services firms that operate trading platforms have their own set of worries keeping them up at night: how can they be sure their systems can withstand the volume spikes accompanying these periods of high volatility?
Their trading platforms must be able to process every trade – handling billions of transactions per day while executing thousands of analytic queries per second from hundreds of applications. They must be massively scalable and reliable to accommodate unexpected levels of transaction volumes.
When market volatility and trading volumes spike unexpectedly – like they are doing now – transaction and query workloads may surpass the planned system headroom. The resulting consequences, including dropped trades, delays, or a systems failure, can be catastrophic, incurring financial losses and reputational damage of the firm.
InterSystems technology is powering trading platforms for some of the world’s largest investment banks – and has enabled them to withstand all major market corrections, including the 2008 financial crisis, the 2010 “flash crash,” the devaluation of China’s currency in 2015, and this week’s tsunami – without a single inclident.
What makes a trading platforms stable and reliable during these periods of high volatility is an underlying data platform that can continue to process transactions and analytics simultaneously even when workloads spike to unexpected levels. It’s one of the hallmarks of InterSystems IRIS Data Platform. To learn more, please read our product literature.
